And Victoria completed the account of the things she witnessed while the prisoners were being judged:
"I told you, brother, how they acquitted the innocent; now I shall show you how they performed sentence on the guilty. Let me take the case of Montmorin, the double traitor absolved by the Orleans High Court. That scandalous acquittal was one of the causes of to-day's events. The people, tired and irritated at seeing the criminals pass scatheless under the sword of the law, has done justice to itself, by striking them! Montmorin, brought before the court, showed himself haughty and arrogant; a contemptuous smile contracted his lips. 'You are Citizen Montmorin? The crimes of which you are accused are notorious. What have you to say in your defense?' Maillard asked the former minister. 'I refuse to reply; I do not recognize your right to sit upon me,' retorted Montmorin. In vain Maillard urged him to speak; the prisoner maintained an obstinate silence. 'Take the accused to La Force,' ordered Maillard, after with a look consulting the jurors, all of whom gave, by an affirmative nod of the head, their approval of the sentence of the Count of Montmorin."
"But Maillard had just ordered the prisoner to be taken to La Force?"
"A conventional phrase, to spare the condemned up to the last moment the agonies of death. 'Take the accused to La Force,' or 'Release the accused,' were the formulas for the supreme penalty. They opened before them the door that gave on the courtyard; the door closed on them, and the justiciaries performed their office."
"Strange contradiction—pity and ferocity!"
"Misled by the words pronounced by Maillard, Montmorin quoth in a supercilious voice, 'I do not go on foot; let them call a coach.' 'It awaits you at the door,' responded Maillard. Montmorin was pushed into the courtyard, where they ended him. Bakman, the Swiss regimental colonel, also acquitted by the High Court of Orleans, underwent the same fate as Montmorin; also Protot and Valvins, both counterfeiters; Abbot Bardy, a monster who had cut his own brother to pieces, and—but we can content ourselves with these examples."
Victoria sank into somber silence; I pressed her hand compassionately, and passed to my own room to seek in repose forgetfulness from this wretched day.
CHAPTER X.
ROYALTY ABOLISHED.
Tallien, in his account of the times, traces the events leading up to these September days; he marks among the causes of the public indignation the scandalous acquittals of the Orleans High Court, and the approach of the foreign armies, after the capture of Longwy and Verdun. Then he proceeds:
"At the same time, a criminal exposed in the public place had the temerity to cry on the scaffold, 'Long live the King! Long live the Queen! Long live Lafayette! Long live the Prussians! To the devil with the Nation!' These utterances provoked the anger of the people, and the wretch would have perished on the instant had not the attorney of the Commune shielded him with his own body, and had him taken back to prison to be turned over to the judges. In the course of his examination he declared that for several days money had been scattered profusely in the prisons, and that, at the first opportunity, the brigands there held in durance were to be armed in the service of the counter-revolutionists!